Norway and Mary Wollstonecraft: My heroine of the high seas

With a baby in tow, Bee Rowlatt heads to Norway to trace the footsteps of Mary
Wollstonecraft, a lovelorn, treasure-hunting 18th-century feminist.

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"Wollstonecraft undertook the voyage with her baby and a trusty maid. I am bringing my baby and a large rucksack but alas, no maid"Photo: ALAMY

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"This coast is wild. Wollstonecraft notes the need for 'an experienced mariner'. If you look at a map, you will see that the country is almost all coast: endless islands, zigzag coastlines and fjords inside fjords"Photo: ALAMY

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The town of Tønsberg; eighty per cent of Norwegians live within six miles of the seaPhoto: ALAMY

"I enter a boat with the same indifference as I change horses; and as for danger, come when it may, I dread it not sufficiently to have any anticipating fears."

Mary Wollstonecraft was no ordinary tourist. She wrote these words while travelling along wild Scandinavian shores in 1795, a time of highwaymen and pirates.

Wollstonecraft was something extraordinary. A pioneering educator and writer, she counted among her friends visionaries such as William Blake and Thomas Paine. She not only hung around with advocates of revolution, she initiated one of her own: her Vindication of the Rights of Woman pretty much invented feminism.

Later in life she married the philosopher William Godwin; their daughter was Mary Shelley, the author of Frankenstein. But in Norway, she was up to something else entirely. She was on a mission, trying to recover her dodgy boyfriend's lost cargo of silver, smuggled out of revolutionary France, and she was having a bad time. Wollstonecraft was skint, had an illegitimate baby, and was pretending to be married. Her dashing American lover, Gilbert Imlay, had turned out to be a serial cheat. Wollstonecraft attempted suicide, and a mere two weeks later she set off on this trip.

They both had a vested interest in its outcome: Imlay gets her off his case and gets his silver back (he hopes) while Wollstonecraft tries to prove her love, and regain his. She is a broken-hearted treasure-hunting single mum philosopher on the high seas, and I think I am a bit in love with her. So I am retracing her steps, on the part of her journey where she pursues a notorious Norwegian captain down the rocky coastline of the Skagerrak.

Wollstonecraft undertook the voyage with her baby and a trusty maid. I am bringing my baby and a large rucksack but alas, no maid. We begin in Tønsberg, a coastal town to the south of Oslo where Wollstonecraft made a base for her treasure hunt. It's a pretty town, a jumble of coloured wooden houses that look like attractive garden sheds. With a delightful local guide, Ursula Houge, I visit the places where our heroine relaxed, posted many letters to the undeserving Imlay; and dined out with Tønsberg's finest.

Wollstonecraft exclaims: "Norwegians enjoy all the blessings of freedom," but it's not just Norway's political possibilities that inspire her. Nature is hugely important. She responds to the sublime in the wilderness around her with abandon, and a lot of exclamation marks. Her new way of travel writing profoundly influenced subsequent Romantic writers; Coleridge's "Kubla Khan" has clear echoes of the book.

Will (the baby) and I are staying in a hostel just below the brow of the hill on which Wollstonecraft often sat, overlooking the town and the surrounding sea. She wrote: "the white sails… turned the cliffs, or seemed to take shelter under the pines which covered the little islands that so gracefully rose to render the terrific ocean beautiful. The fishermen were calmly casting their nets; whilst the seagulls hovered over the unruffled deep."

It's still the scene today. Above all, it's peaceful. There is a wholesome sense of healthiness being here; it feels good for you. It could be the cleanliness or the proximity of the sea, but it also seems an ideal place for children. Even breakfast looks like fairy-tale food: perfect bread, jam in quaint bowls, creamy honey, berries and white eggs. And of course, fish: pickled fish, smoked fish, salt fish and fresh fish.

Will is 10 months old and pushes some of the above into his mouth with enthusiasm. Much of it is also squeezed through his fingers, examined and then deliberately sprinkled on the floor around us. Luckily no one ever minds this, indeed, they love babies here.

Travelling with a baby was the part I was most worried about. But as it happens, he has been the perfect companion, drawing people in to chat to us and eliciting countless acts of kindness I might otherwise have missed.

We leave Tønsberg by bus and have to change twice for our next stop, Kragerø. Luckily, the buses are also part of child-friendly Norway; the drivers leap out to help us on board. They smile and chat. One even holds Will as I fold the buggy, then asks his passengers to move, giving us two seats together. I'm still recovering from the contrast to British buses when he installs a baby seat so Will can sleep.

Wollstonecraft travelled mostly by boat, heading westward in pursuit of the Norwegian captain who did a runner with Imlay's cargo of silver. I've enlisted the help of Gunnar Molden, a local historian and Wollstonecraft enthusiast, whose dogged research into this treacherous tale spans decades and countries. From Kragerø, Molden has arranged for a boat to take us on to Wollstonecraft's final stop.

The moment we meet, we set about speculating on the missing silver and the Norwegian captain. Mick, the skipper, hadn't heard of Wollstonecraft's adventures here, but he's soon drawn in. We eat sugared cinnamon buns and I count jellyfish as we set sail. The sun is dazzling, there's a fair wind, and I'm so excited I can't sit still.

This coast is wild. Wollstonecraft notes the need for "an experienced mariner". If you look at a map, Norway is like a large hairy blanket draped over the top of Europe. Look closer and you will see that the country is almost all coast: endless islands, zigzag coastlines and fjords inside fjords. There is water everywhere. Eighty per cent of Norwegians live within six miles (10km) of the sea. It is their element. Rocks burst through all around, small islands, soaring rocky cliffs, or forming the tell-tale white foam that shows they are just beneath the water's surface.

Our heroine was heading for the town of Risør, but bad weather forced them to shelter at a tiny place called Portør. Here they spent the night, and she writes: "It is indeed a corner of the world." We moor here. The sea is encircled by round rocks, smooth enough to walk up, with pockets of moss, tufted grass and wild flowers. A lookout post clings to the upper slopes. A small cluster of wooden houses shares bright, tidy lawns. They don't look quite tough enough for their surroundings, though; I dread to imagine a winter here. Portør is magical, but I'm anxious to press on for Risør.

Risør is the westernmost point of Wollstonecraft's travels, and the place where her fortunes hang in the balance. This small town was inestimably important for her: she will meet the captain here, and challenge him about the missing silver. Her success depends on this meeting; this may be her chance to regain Imlay's affections. We follow the coastline, island after island, rocks upon rocks. I return to her book with a sense of foreboding about what we will find.

Wollstonecraft detests Risør with a venom that's strong even by her standards. The seedy people, dark, smoky houses and glowering cliffs – everything here causes disgust: "To be born here was to be bastilled by nature!" She doesn't stop there: "There is a shrewdness in the character of these people, depraved by a sordid love of money which repels me." And not only do the men stink and have revolting teeth, she archly adds, but "it is well that the women are not very delicate, or they would only love their husbands because they were their husbands".

What a surprise, then, to sail into a town so dazzling it's as though it's been scrubbed with salty water and dried in the bleaching sun. It's so white my eyes hurt. The houses are wooden (of course) and all perfectly white. Bright boats are moored in the clean harbour. Small shops sell tablecloths and tasteful white wicker baskets. The people are good-looking. The sea is bluer than a Seventies postcard. Has the entire place been Photoshopped?

In Risør's defence, Wollstonecraft's words reveal more about her own emotional state than the town itself. It is here that the meeting with the Norwegian captain fails, the legal case against him collapses and Imlay turns even colder on Wollstonecraft. I feel faintly disloyal for loving Risør when it was the scene of such misery for her. The towering cliffs don't torment my soul in the least. I fail to meet any scheming brown-toothed inhabitants. I try my best, but it's very hard to be unhappy here.

The people of Risør are cheerfully forgiving of her damning remarks. The mayor, Knut Thygesen, invites me round for a plate of mackerel in yogurt. "For about 10 years, I was indignant about what she said," he tells me. "Then I discovered much more about her, and now I'm glad – I'm proud that she was here!"

We discuss her excitedly, like proper Wollstonecraft geeks. This woman came from nowhere; had nothing; and died aged only 38.

Yet the waves created by Wollstonecraft's astonishing life can still be felt, and not just here in Risør. Best known for Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Wollstonecraft fought for the rest of mankind, too, rocking not only the political but also the literary world. She was an early Romantic, quite literally, and through her daughter gave birth to Frankenstein and the Gothic genre. So today's Twilight-viewing teenage girls should thank Wollstonecraft: both for their life chances as women, and for R-Patz. Our mackerels in yogurt go cold in the slanting evening sun.

As for me, I didn't expect to find so much happiness in her erratic footsteps, and I'm grateful that they brought us to Risør. The light here seems to intensify in the late afternoons. It will be light for many more hours, but this light is special. The sea, the sky and even the shadows are a brilliant, demented blue.

We wander along the harbour to the Risør Fiske Mokket, where fishing boats unload their catch. You can buy it right there or have it freshly cooked. Will discovers Norwegian fishcakes. He wipes fish in his hair, to the joy of the people at the next table, while I reflect on the ideal family holiday. I conclude that a key ingredient is water.

There's no shortage here. Risør sits in a natural harbour facing a sprinkle of skerries: small uninhabited rocky islands where families in tiny boats potter around. The lure of these islands is strong; there is magic in the notion of a miniature world, of setting foot on a child-sized kingdom. Watery adventures from childhood books spring to mind: Swallows and Amazons, The Famous Five, The Wind in the Willows.

Away from the sea, we find more water. Pushing Will's buggy up an almost vertical road inland, I find within 15 minutes we're on a small path in a forest. Deep within is a lake, in fact the perfect lake: hidden, quiet and clear, with a diving board sticking off the end of a huge rock. I have a surge of missing my older children, who would run wild here. We may just have to return.

Bee Rowlatt will be donating her payment for this article to the Mary Wollstonecraft Memorial Project, campaigning for a statue in her honour: www.maryonthegreen.org

Norway essentials

Getting there: There are no ferries from Britain to Norway, so in the interests of authenticity, we flew to Gothenburg in Sweden and hired a car to Strømstad so we could reach Norway by sea. But it is easier to fly direct to Oslo: SAS (www.flysas.com) and Ryanair (www.ryanair.com) go there.

Two notes of caution: Norway is expensive, and you need all-weather clothing. Fleeces and waterproofs are taken for granted. On the former, Wollstonecraft remarked that "my bill at Tønsberg was… much higher than it ought to have been" and the intervening 216 years have done nothing to change this. A main course in an average restaurant will cost at least £20 and a pint of lager about £8.

Reading: Letters Written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark by Mary Wollstonecraft; Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft by Lyndall Gordon.